Thursday, May 31

Ali Hasanov all fired up

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My first reaction to this article was "wait a sec... this can't be true... its a joke". Unfortunately it wasn't. Ali Hasanov, head of the social political department at the Presidential Administration said some things today that were simply unbelievable (not that he has ever said things that made sense before). It was a fired speech he gave nonetheless. For instance his toughest reaction was to human rights organizations as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Freedom House. Why? Well because they speak the truth and truth is one thing Azerbaijani authorities do not like. In fact, its a word erased from their vocabulary a long time ago.

What Mr. Hasanov and the rest of the Azerbaijani authoritarian leadership fails to see is that the moment they change and adopt true values of democracy (or step down and let democracy take over) none of these institutions are going to rank Azerbaijai at its lowest. But hey, who am I talking about?!

But the statement of the day was when Ali Hasanov actually said "Nowhere in the world the opposition is not as free as in Azerbaijan". Did he actually say that? I guess he did. I mean "Hello?!" where do you live Mr. Hasanov? Certainly not in a country where recent and previous protests were crashed and protesters arrested?

European Parliament was also given its share of dragony fire. "Let them look at themselves, let them look at the crisis in the Eastern Europe" he said.

Oh, and Mr. Hasanov, perhaps you missed a big chunk of news and information about the Arab Uprisings. It wasn't caused by "multinational TV channels" but by firstly a young man who was sick of his government and set himself on fire. Unless "multinational TV channels" have some extraordinary powers of remotely setting people on fire you are so oblivious that its just funny and makes you look funny too. So you don't care about Azerbaijani people and their well being, at least have the decency not trash all those Tunisians, Egyptians, Libyans and many more who managed to change their governments and though still in the process, ensure that they no longer will be oppressed, tortured, silenced, arrested and simply ignored by their governments.

Your blindness Mr. Hasanov is just sickening. When will you stop and open your eyes and say something that will remotely resemble truth...

I' citizen of Azerbaijan and fully understand and largely support what he said. Azerbaijan has been a victim of West's double standards since inception of our independence. Double standards, xenophobia and ignorance. I'll give 2 examples. 1// The occupation of our land by Armenia has recognised by all international organisations including NATO, EU, UN and not implementing sanctions or calling for Armenia to immediately vacate the occupied lands to let 1 million refugees go back to their homes, i.e. to restore their basic human rights which are happily ignored in the world, including all the intl. "human rights" organisations!2// Currently two young poets are captured in Iran for the last 4 months and despite Azeri government's continuous demands, they are kept without a right to call, see a lawyer, relatives. They maybe executed as after keeping silent for 3.5 months, following Azerbaijan's demand, Iran declared they were arrested for spying. The poets went to Iran to take part in a poetry festival. Now, the whole world ignores this case. Including the Azeri "human right activists" who created the recent black PR around Azerbaijan in their quest for popularity support (failed) and extra funding and Amnesty Intl, HRW etc. who also happily ignore this case. Hypocrisy or what???!!!

In Azerbaijan, there is sufficient freedom of speech and access to all info. 65% population has direct access to uncensored Internet and 100% de facto have access to it through their mobile phones (for every 100 Azeris, there are 100 mobile phones). What is not appreciated and ill tolerated even by the population is unfounded criticism in absence of any constructive contribution form their side. Azeris live better day by day. There are so many problems from the Soviet past that even after many improvement still a lot needs to be done. It requires time. Some impatient ones want everything yesterday without contributing with some constructive and practical actions. They create unnecessary tension amongst ignorant citizens who are not aware of al the details of how exactly the capitalist system works. Those activists use ignorance of people who think old Soviet way, have no clue about the demands and laws of capitalism, demand that the oil money went straight in their pockets (instead of being invested into country's infrastructure and development and diversification which unfortunately they don't understand and fall victims to subjective interests of a group of activists). Why Ali Hasanov said there was freedom? because there is - everybody says and does what they want (including misleading people) and all the country government asks them is to stop creating sabotage and join in the constructive development and building work the government is doing by, for example, increasing the maturity of the civil society. But how can the if they themselves are not only immature but often only worried about their own personal gains. The 95% of people of Azerbaijan does NOT support those activists and does not regard with respect the international "human rights" organisations as we have seen enough double standards and cynicism from them so far :-)

Welcome to Flying Carpets and Broken Pipelines. I started this blog in 2008.

Flying Carpets is about Azerbaijan (where I am originally from) and a little bit about Turkey (where I live). Flying Carpets its mostly politics, and rights issues that I deeply care about and want to see change some day.

I hope it offers at least a tiny bit of glimpse into a country that has so much potential and yet wasting it all thanks to its leaders.